Chapter 17 - The Inside Sabotage
The heavy iron door of our holding cell slammed shut, plunging us into a cold, damp darkness beneath the sterile medical facility.
Damien immediately rushed to my side, wrapping his arms around me and kissing my forehead with fierce, desperate gratitude.
"You just bought us three days with the most brilliant lie I have ever heard in my life," he whispered, pressing his forehead against mine.
"We do not have three days, Damien," I replied, my voice shaking as the adrenaline crash finally hit my exhausted system.
"Arthur's doctors will run a full blood panel on the boys in the morning, and they will realize their blood is perfectly clean."
We had less than twelve hours to break out of a maximum-security fortress on an isolated island in the middle of the ocean.
Damien began pacing the small cell, his hands running frantically through his hair as he analyzed the structural weaknesses of the room.
He stopped suddenly, staring at the heavy steel ventilation grate bolted securely near the ceiling of the cell.
"My father built this facility using the same shadow architectural firm that designed the safehouse in New York," Damien realized, a dangerous smile spreading across his bruised face.
He reached into his mouth, wincing in pain as he violently twisted a false molar located in the back of his jaw.
With a sickening crack, he pulled the fake tooth free, revealing a microscopic, titanium wire saw coiled tightly inside the hollow cap.
"Evelyn wasn't the only one who prepared for catastrophic emergencies," Damien muttered, stepping up onto the rickety metal cot.
For the next four hours, the agonizing sound of titanium grinding against steel echoed softly in our dark cell.
Damien worked until his fingers were bleeding and blistered, finally cutting through the heavy bolts of the ventilation grate.
He pulled the heavy metal cover down, boosting me up into the narrow, dusty shaft before pulling his massive frame in right behind me.
We crawled through the suffocating darkness of the air ducts, the freezing ocean wind howling through the vents from the outside.
Using his architectural knowledge of the syndicate's blueprints, Damien navigated us directly above the facility's central server room.
"If we destroy the servers, the automated security doors will fail open, and the backup generators will completely overload," he whispered.
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We kicked out the ceiling grate and dropped silently into the glowing blue server room, completely undetected by the massive mercenary force above us.
I grabbed a heavy fire extinguisher from the wall, ready to smash the motherboards and plunge Arthur Mercer’s empire into absolute chaos.
